A distributor of Bud Light said he believes the brand will not recover from the fall in sales following the conservative boycott over its partnership with a transgender influencer.
"Consumers have made a choice," a Texas-based beer distributor told the New York Post. "They have left [Bud Light] and that’s how it’s going to be. I don’t envision a big percentage of them coming back."
Distributors are focusing on other brands as they're worried that those who boycotted Bud Light have settled on other, similar beers.
"There is an increasing feeling that this [Bud Light] decline rate could last for a while and the distributors are worried about losing those drinkers to other similar brands," David Steinmann, executive editor at Beer Marketer’s Insights, told the Post.
The boycott began in April, when Bud Light's partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney became public. Mulvaney revealed the collaboration on social media on April 1, showing a Bud Light can featuring the influencer's face. Mulvaney also posted a video drinking Bud Light in a bathtub.
Sales continue to suffer months later. In the week ending on July 15, Bud Light sales were down 13.9 percent and the brand's volume, meaning the units of beer sold, was down 18 percent, Newsweek reported.
Parent company Anheuser-Busch this month announced it is laying off hundreds of employees in the United States.
The move affects less than 2 percent of the company's workforce of 18,000 and will not impact warehouse or brewery employees. Around 350 positions, many of them corporate, will be cut.
Bud Light has lost its position as America's top-selling beer. It was the second-best-selling beer in the four weeks leading up to June 3, making up 7.3 percent of U.S. retail-store beer purchases. Modelo took first place with 8.4 percent of sales, the Wall Street Journal reported.